The central claim of Stoic ethics is as stark and uncompromising as any position in ancient philosophy: virtue is the only good, vice is the only evil, and everything else is indifferent. Health, wealth, pleasure, reputation, relationships, even life itself, are not genuinely good in the Stoic sense, though some of them are preferred and worth pursuing when circumstances allow. This position strikes most people on first encounter as obviously false, or at minimum as psychologically implausible. How can health not be good? How can the love of your family not be genuinely valuable? How can you claim that the...